Los Angeles: The Swinging 60s photos (1960-1969)
Above: Downtown 1960.
245 S. Grand Avenue on Bunker Hill, circa 1960.
The Brousseau Mansion, once located at 238 South Bunker Hill Drive, in 1960. (Photographer: Arnold Hylen / California State Library)
In 1960, the Los Angeles County Medical Association set up a special drive-in clinic for people to receive a Salk polio shot without having to leave their car. This particular clinic was held at the Glendale Federal Savings and Loan Association at 401 N. Brand Blvd. in Glendale. The nurse was Ina Poole.
Photographer: Jon Woods / LAPL 00082889
The Welton Becket Association discusses plans for building Century City on the former Fox Studios backlot in 1960.
Few people know this but the backlot was once part of a 176-acre ranch owned by Tom Mix before the cowboy superstar sold it to William Fox.
To find out more about the history of Century City, click the link below. I wrote it for the Century City Chamber of Commerce.
Senator John F. Kennedy accepts the presidential nomination at the National Demographic Convention held at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena (3939 S. Figueroa St.) in July 1960. Afterwards, Kennedy held a meeting at the Biltmore Hotel, where a decision was made to add Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas as his running mate to shore up votes in the south.
LAPL 00105432
Los Angeles Times reporter Jerry Burns uses a 1551-B Sound Level Meter to measure freeway noise on the 101 Fwy in 1960. (LAPL 00124589)
Two officials meeting in 1961 to discuss the conversion of the old Pacific Electric subway tunnel (under the terminal building) into an atomic bomb fallout shelter. (LAPL 00066981)
A fireman’s point-of-view of a blaze that destroyed 200 acres near La Tuna Canyon in the Verdugo Hills in 1961. (Photographer: Jon Woods / 00114994)
Pacific Electric car No. 1541 in 1961. The M & N Pipe Supply Company was located at 4700 East Long Beach Ave.
Casa de Petrol, in 1961, formerly located at 14325 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks, CA (near the corner of Beverly Glen). This was where James Dean filled up his Porsche before later meeting his maker in a fatal car accident in 1955. It’s now a flower shop.
An unknown man battles a raging fire with a sprinkler hose in May of 1961. The fire, which erupted in the Griffith Park area, burned 1,200-acres (a 10-mile perimeter) and destroyed 24 homes and damaged over 80 others before it was contained. There were no major injuries. Among the mansions lost was one owned by Aldous Huxley. (Photographer: George Brich / LAPL 00114986)
Bunker Hill Avenue near 4th Street, June 1961. According to the Huntington Library: “Left to right: 333 South Bunker Hill Ave, the Castle at 325 South Bunker Hill Ave, and the Lady McDonald residence at 321 South Bunker Hill Ave. All built around 1888-90.”
“Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles.” — Raymond Chandler
La Cruz Street approaching Alma Real Drive in the Pacific Palisades, circa 1962.
A special late “shopping night” on Ventura Blvd., between Laurel Canyon and Fallbrook Ave. in 1962.
Photo: Jeff Goldwater / LAPL 00031133
Smokey the Bear at the Pan Pacific Auditorium during the 1962 Sportsmen’s Show. The little girl is about 2.5 years old. (Photographer: Hal Jensen / LAPL 00039073)
Dodger Stadium. Bottom photo, c. 1962.
Mrs. Robert Sullivan sitting inside her flooded Sun Valley Home in 1962 after a heavy downpour. (Photographer: Alan Hyde / LAPL 00112352)
The fiery loss of the Hollywood Polar Palace ice skating rink on the corner of Melrose and Van Ness in May of 1963. The Ice Follies were held there in 1938. (LAPL)
A Bell Rocket Belt demonstration in 1964 at the Pan Pacific Auditorium. The Rocket Belt, running on hydrogen peroxide, had enough power to lift a person over 800 feet in the air at speeds of up to 60 mph if desired. (Photographer: Gordon Dean/LAPL)
“Remember when Lost Horizon was a movie? Now it’s Los Angeles during a smog alert.” — Anonymous. Photo is from 1964 (Photographer: Mike Sergieff / LAPL 00060078)
Wilshire Blvd approaching Westwood from around Veteran Avenue, circa 1964. The Linde Medical Plaza building, built in 1957, is in the distance. Architect: Paul Revere Williams. Today, it is the Westwood Medical Plaza Building.
Beverly Hills in 1964. Notice the old Robinson’s Department Store?
Models at the Golden Do-Nut Shop once located at Magnolia and Lankershim in 1964. The girl on the far left is DeDe Lind, who later became the August 1967 Playboy Playmate of the Month. A photo of her apparently was placed onboard the Apollo XII spacecraft in 1969.
The La Brea Tar Pits in 1964. Construction of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is underway in the distance. Photographer: George Brich / 00122146.
The newly opened Los Angeles County Museum of Art, circa 1965.
Downtown Los Angeles, 1965.
Inside the Valley Juvenile Hall (now known as the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall), located at 16350 Filbert St. in Sylmar. The facility opened in 1965 at a cost of $5,000,000. The girl staring out the window was one of the first 13 teens housed at the facility. (Photographer: Gordon Dean / LAPL: 00112109).
The Emmanuel Lutheran Church’s Summer Sunday Drive-In Service at 11919 Oxnard Street. The drive-in service started around 1948 and was touted by the church as the first of its kind in the U.S. Over the span of a couple of decades, the service started at 8:15 a.m. The average number of attendees was around 200 with many children still clad in their pajamas and adults wearing casual clothes. Ushers would go from car to car with their offering baskets.
This photo was dated June 19, 1965. (LAPL 00082763)
According to the Los Angeles Public Library: “Bimbo, precocious pachyderm and star attraction at Jungleland, Thousand Oaks, shows how a 1965 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Sports Sedan can carry more luggage this year. The trunk capacity in full-size Oldsmobiles this year has been increased by up to 3.9 cubic feet. Bimbo has to admit his trunk capacity remains the same.” (Photographer: Art Streib / LAPL 00112982)
In early June of 1965, a series of landslides wiped out three homes and eight apartment buildings in the Pacific Palisades. No earthquake or heavy rains were responsible for the damage. The ground simply gave out, possibly from an underground water stream.
Locals watched as apartments on Los Liones Street threaten to slide down the hill and damage the Lindomar Lodge at 17381 Sunset Blvd. (foreground).
The Lindomar was saved, but guests were asked to leave while the debris was removed.
Residents in the apartment buildings, meanwhile, were able to safely evacuate.
The landslide started around 4:00 a.m. with the cracking of timber and the shattering of windows. Between the hours of 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., the ground slid approximately five feet per hour before slowing to about four inches per hour.
Photographer: Milton Martines / LAPL 00050134
Broadway and 7th Street, circa 1965.
A motorist passes City Hall, circa 1965.
A holiday traffic check by California Highway Patrol officers on Sunset Blvd. near Sunset Plaza in 1965. (LAPL 00044613)
A dilapidated boarding house next to the Belmont Hotel (251 Hill Street) in 1966. Photographer: L. Mildred Harris / LAPL 00110273.
Figueroa Street and Exposition Blvd. on a Saturday night in 1966, back when the city tried enforcing 9:00 p.m. curfews to curtail crime.
Pandora’s Box, a teen rock club once located at 8118 Sunset Boulevard, was the epicenter of “the Sunset Strip Riot,” of the 1960s after LAPD began enforcing a 10:00 p.m. curfew for persons under eighteen. Photo: November 20, 1966. (LAPL 00040771)
The 101 freeway in 1966. LAPL 00041134
A postcard view of Broadway and 6th at dusk, circa 1960s. (Bizarre Los Angeles)
“A hairy head is a happy head!”
Students fight for their right to wear longer hair at Palisades High School in 1966. I sure hope they won, because nobody likes hair loss. (LAPL 00041782)
According to the Los Angeles Public Library, “Draftees, at left, walk into Armed Forces induction center at 1031 S. Broadway while anti-Vietnam war demonstrators, in the foreground, attempt to distribute pamphlets to them. Earlier, police arrested 19 demonstrators who assertively refused to disperse after having blocked doorway to the center.” The photo was taken in 1967. (Photographer: Art Worden / LAPL 00084118)
The Castle (formerly located at 325 S. Bunker Hill), circa October 1967. Through the fog, a skyscraper looms in the distance. (LAPL 00059391)
An interesting history of the Castle can be found here:http://www.onbunkerhill.org/castle
The lost 1880s Rochester House at its original location at 1012 West Temple Street in 1967. (LAPL 00055382)
To read more details about what happened to the house, click here: http://
Ever wondered how and when that mammoth ended up in the La Brea Tar Pits? Well, here’s your answer. The sculpture, created by Howard Ball, was positioned by helicopter in June of 1968. (Photographer: Russell Pursley/ LAPL 00071907)Doesn’t it look like an action scene from a low-budget monster film?
STEAR’S FOR STEAKS ADDS PUTTING GREEN
Following nine days of heavy rain in February 1969, employees of a Los Angeles display fixture company placed its wet mannequins on the sidewalk outside to dry in the sun. The strange sight no doubt caused a few double-takes among people passing by.
The Bunker Hill Towers (234 S. Figueroa Street) and the Union Bank Plaza Building (the tall building in the background). The photo was taken between 1968 and 1974.
The Bunker Hill Towers were constructed in 1966. Its architect was Robert Alexander. The Union Bank Building was completed in 1968.
The end of Bunker Hill in 1969. Two 1880 era homes, “The Castle” and “The Saltbox,” (seen here) were moved to their new home at Heritage Square in Montecito Heights for safekeeping. However, vandals broke into the old houses and started a fire that destroyed both buildings. LAPL 00059374
Here is the “Castle,” a rundown Queen Anne revival mansion built in 1882, after it was moved from 325 S. Bunker Hill Avenue to Montecito Heights for the newly created Heritage Square Museum in March, 1969. Before it could be restored, the house was destroyed by fire later that year. The alleged arsonists were thought to have been teenagers/young adults who had used the mansion as a party house.
The photo was taken from inside the Salt Box, another historic structure destroyed by the same fire. (LAPL 00102757)
Joe’s Adult Books in Lennox, CA, circa 1969.
Inside the Grand Hall of the Los Angeles Music Center, aka Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Music Center was designed by Welton Beckett and it opened in 1964.
3 thoughts on “Los Angeles: The Swinging 60s photos (1960-1969)”
These are wonderful photos from a time when Los Angeles was truly great.
Thank you.
George Vreeland Hill
Thank you for the great work of putting this together.
I learned to swim at Evergreen Park on 4th St, 1960.
Enjoyed the pool and the bus rider on the 47 line.